Have booked 24-28 Sept (4 nights). Paid £20 dep. Now we have something to look forward to. This will be our first use of the Eriba since buying it at the beginning of April. But before we can use it we need a towbar fitted to the car - don't think the caravan mover would manage Poole to Netley! So far all we've done is look at it every day as it resides in our back garden, sit in it, open the windows, test the water pumps and currently running tests on a fridge that freezes - don't ask. We are both looking forward to meeting everyone as you all sound so friendly and the banter at times is amusing. Robin & Pat.

Is the fridge freezing stuff that's near the cooling fins?

Frantone
Thankyou for enquiring. We haven't used the fridge yet. Basically, I'll try to keep it short, after the storms and driving rain beginning of July when the weather had died down I took the service grills off to see if we'd shipped any water - it was dry. But under the fridge pipe work was a pool of yellow liquid - I assume it was some of the coolant - don't know much about fridges. Since then over a period of 18 days I ran a series of tests, using both mains and gas. One mains test was down on full temperature, one other at half temperature -( half temp is what Dometic call medium temp which is their preferred setting for ambient temps 15C -25C). I also ran two tests using gas, both on half temp setting. In all tests the ice cube tray was filled and placed in the freezer and a plastic cup with 10mm of water placed on the middle rack together with a fridge thermometer placed at the front of the rack. In all tests there was fluctuation with the fridge internal temperature from below zero to 15+C. I'm currently running another test. I should say the freezer appears to be working as the ice cubes, once frozen, stay frozen. During the tests I recorded at irregular times time, internal temperature and the status of the ice cubes or the water in the plastic cup.
Probably, from tomorrow I'll turn the temperature setting lower to see what happens. I could also put some items in it and see what happens!!!

I've been using Dometic fridges/freezers for the past 16 years in motorhomes but never experienced what I am seeing at present. If those storms hadn't happened I guess I wouldn't have found out until I used it that it's not working as expected

The fridge is a Dometic 5330 - I think its a new range and is scheduled to go into a Dometic service agent for resolution in a few weeks time.

If anyone out there has any ideas.....

Rob.

Quote: Frantone wrote in post #2

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Is the fridge freezing stuff that's near the cooling fins?

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I think there is a cup to collect condensed liquids/waste isn't there? The yellow stuff may not be anything other than muck!
If the coolant was to leak then it would all go and there would be no cooling at all.

According to the Dometic manual it say's when discussing defrosting, and I quote ' Water thawing in the main compartment of the refrigerator runs into an appropriate container at the back of the refrigerator. From there the water evaporates'. Could this be your your 'cup'.

Earlier today I took the bottom grill off and hey presto there was some more yellow fluid splashes in the compartment - not as much as I initially found - but I'll leave it there this time.

I'm going to run some more controlled tests and play a little with the temperature controls but at the end of the day how do you know where to set the temperature controls? Hopefully when it goes in to be sorted I'll have some answers.

Freezing in the back of the compartment may be because the stored items are touching the fins and causing an air flow problem. Dometic say there should be a gap of 10mm - how do you keep that when we're travelling and more so when we start off probably with the fridge packed to the limit.